


Absolution

by Stargazer1323



Series: Last Words [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s10e03 Soul Survivor, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 14:39:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2696627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stargazer1323/pseuds/Stargazer1323
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things will be easier to forgive than others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Absolution

_“I’m proud of us.”_

He was not having deja vu, Sam told himself over and over as he helped Dean stagger down the hallway to his bedroom. His brother was back; he was alive and human again, he was not bleeding out from a stab wound to the chest, and as soon as he had a decent night’s sleep, he would be his old self again. He had saved his brother; couldn’t that be enough, just for this moment?

“Hey, Sammy?”

“Yeah?” Sam tried not to flinch as he looked down at Dean, who was sitting slumped against his headboard, looking as exhausted as Sam felt. He braced himself for some sort of apology. He knew it was coming, but he wasn’t sure if he was ready for it. It was an effort to meet his brother’s eyes.

And, despite his best efforts, Dean obviously knew exactly what he was thinking. “Um…” Sam could see the gears turning in his brother’s head as he swallowed what he had been about to say. “I’m starving. You got anything left around here that isn’t rabbit food?”

“I… I’ll go see what I can find.” It shouldn’t have been a relief to leave his brother alone there, but it was.

Sam was less than two miles down the road from the bunker when he had to stop the car and pull over. His hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t steer, even if he could have seen through the salt water in his eyes. He closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands into them to hold back the tears, taking deep breaths to slow his racing heartbeat. He had saved his brother; why wasn’t that enough?

_“Imagine you spend your whole life with a guy. You know him better than anyone else in the world; you’ve seen him at his highest and his lowest; you will do anything to save him from himself. He doesn’t want to be saved, sure, but you think you know him well enough to change his mind. Trouble is, he knows you just as well as you know him, and he has some things to say to you too. Which one do you think is going to come out on top, Sammy? The so-called savior, or the one who doesn’t want to be saved?”_

Dean had never said those words, but Sam heard them all the same in place of the memory of Dean’s biting rebuttal of the observation that he had shown Cole mercy by letting him live. As much as he wanted to believe that all those hateful, hurtful things Dean had said to him had been the demon talking, he couldn’t escape the fact that the demon had been Dean—his own soul, working with his own thoughts and memories to conjure up the verbal knives that would cut his brother’s heart out, working through his own body to stalk his brother with a hammer and murderous intent. They couldn’t just brush that aside and pretend it never happened, but Sam couldn’t think of anything Dean could say to him right now that would make it all right.

But Dean was still his brother; still the boy who had pulled him from more than one fire, still the big brother who had raised him and looked after him all his life, still the man who had used his dying breath to express pride in the way that they had lived their lives and all they had done together. That Dean was back, and that was all that really mattered. Absolution would come, eventually, and that was enough for now.

Well, that and some junk food and good alcohol.


End file.
